


Bearing Fruit

by Lenasaurous, nyebae (sterndecorum)



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, EXTREMELY self-indulgent, Eventual Happy Ending, Gender Dysphoria, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Misgendering, Rating May Change, Threatened Miscarriage, Time Skips, Trans Oma Kokichi, Unplanned Pregnancy, no dubcon, spoiler heavy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-24
Updated: 2019-05-21
Packaged: 2019-08-28 20:40:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 12,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16730247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lenasaurous/pseuds/Lenasaurous, https://archiveofourown.org/users/sterndecorum/pseuds/nyebae
Summary: Yet another day in this hellhole.The idiots had quickly given up and settled on an uneasy truce in spite of Monokuma’s threats. Ouma was endlessly frustrated how everyone refused to do anything, sitting around, acting chummy, as if they weren’t trapped in what was essentially a prison. He just wished they’d do something.His wish would be granted sooner than expected.Come morning, their self-appointed headmaster had an announcement for them.“A body has been discovered! Everyone please gather in the library.”





	1. Twelve: Lime

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is my first fic in ages have mercy on my soul  
> special thanks to Lenasaurous for enabling me and for making this actually readable ;;  
> you're the best <3
> 
> i can't promise a regular updating schedule because this is still being written and edited  
> i just hoped that posting this first chapter would push me to stop procrastinating
> 
> chapter titles are (spoiler) bab weeks and sizes
> 
> recommended reading as entire work, this is a collection of snippets especially for the first weeks

Ouma Kokichi stared at himself in the mirror, trying to determine what was off about his appearance. He looked exactly the same as he did roughly two weeks ago, when they first awoke inside the killing game. Yet something seemed off.

He slowly removed his checkered scarf and looked closer. His uniform retained the familiar tightness around his chest, even more so now that he wasn’t wearing his binder. His chest ached but that was to be expected: after all, he was too malnourished to have the slightest hope of average hormonal cycles. 

Kokichi unclasped his uniform jacket and tossed it carelessly aside. 

Yet another day in this hellhole. 

The idiots had quickly given up and settled on an uneasy truce in spite of Monokuma’s threats. He was endlessly frustrated how everyone refused to do anything, sitting around, acting chummy, as if they weren’t trapped in what was essentially a prison. He just wished they’d do  _ something _ .

His wish would be granted sooner than expected.

Come morning, their self-appointed headmaster had an announcement for them. 

“A body has been discovered! Everyone please gather in the library.”

 

* * *

 

Kokichi realized two things upon leaving his room: one, the day had already broken into the afternoon,  and two, the inexplicable spot of dread sitting in the pit of his stomach was quickly ballooning into something he didn’t know how to handle.

Had he misread someone? Had someone become so frustrated that they’d stooped so low as to claim the first blood perk? Other than that weirdo in the mask he hadn’t bothered learning the name of, he’d written just about everyone off as harmless. Could he really have been wrong?

What he saw when he arrived at the library almost broke his heart.

He’d never been that close to Amami, he wasn’t close to any of the others really, but he  _ had _ liked him. He seemed to know where his priorities should lie even when everyone else didn’t. 

He was quick to hide this brief moment of real emotion with crocodile tears that came with too much ease for comfort.

“Wh-what…? This is a lie, right? My dearest Amamii’s dea- oh, I mean… was _ killed _ !!”

As expected, no one paid him any attention. He slunk back, out of the throng of panicked teenagers, and let his mind calm down. That was easier said than done though, as confusing emotions kept rattling around his head like beans in a maraca. What was wrong with him? Why did he suddenly care so much about a rando who got his skull bashed in with a shot put ball?

 

* * *

 

Kokichi watched Akamatsu’s body dangling from the noose, mouth hanging ajar. He wasn’t sad, he didn’t care much but… but somehow he could feel tears threatening to break the floodgates. Everyone else was shocked, scared and mournful because they had lost  _ Kaede _ , the glue that had held them together. The glue that had given herself up for their sakes. But Kokichi had never payed that any mind. He’d considered her naive, even annoying and yet still he was fighting tooth and nail to keep the tears down.

But for the life of him, he just didn’t know why.

At least she hadn’t been boring.


	2. Thirteen: Peapod

Even as his emotions ran rampant, his facade stayed firmly in place. The very next day he was the resident nuisance again and everyone was back to yelling at him.

Routine returning to his life was like welcoming a husband returning back from war. Routine was comfortable and familiar, something that, despite being gone for so little time, felt like it had been gone an age. Routine was stable, no matter how boring, stale or lonely that routine was. Being ignored was par for the course, being avoided just as much so. It was appreciated even. When one was left alone, one could do as he wished.

Except for that detective. Saihara Shuichi just wouldn’t leave him alone.

It didn’t matter what he did or said. How many lies he spun to confuse the other, how much he laughed at or insulted him. No matter what, the boy continued to hang off of his every word, attention focused so entirely upon him, Kokichi may as well have been telling him the true meaning of life.

He would have been flattered had it not been so intensely irritating.

While Kokichi just wanted to be left alone most of the time, he had a hard time denying that Saihara wasn’t the best thing to come out of this.

He’d never received such attention in his life. In DICE he was respected, worshipped even, for everything he did, for his genius and cunning. But he’d never realised until this point how starved he’d been of this kind of attentiveness  This warm, fuzzy feeling the other managed to arouse in him, the feeling of being truly cared about, was so foreign and addictive. It was this self-indulgence that allowed him to ignore the fact that the other didn’t really care, that he only stuck around because he was a Detective, and uncovering mysteries was what he did.

If Saihara wanted a mystery though, Ouma was more than willing to provide one. He was a liar after all.

But the more he lied to Shuichi, the more he lied to everyone, the more he began to forget his own lies, falling deeper and deeper into the quagmire he’d created. He didn’t know how long it would be before he’d begin believing his own fantasies. Start thinking that maybe, just maybe, Shuichi did actually care.

It hit Ouma like a freight train when the thought finally occurred to him.  Was he actually developing a _crush_ on the detective? With everything going on, with people dying around him, he still somehow managed to find time to worry about such frivolous things. How sickening.

If only DICE could see him now.  

Frustrated, he snatched a marker up from his desk and started mashing it against the whiteboard he had stolen.

Trustworthy?

Who knew.


	3. Fourteen: Lemon

Kokichi knew that  _ something _ would happen when the monopads were distributed, and he thoroughly encouraged this. And if he had it his way, that something would be a mass viewing of all of them. He may have been insensitive about the whole thing, but it had surprised him that no one was even trying to understand his point of view. 

Unsurprisingly, all of his efforts went to waste and he returned to his room with a few more bug bites than he would have liked, angry and tired. 

He was trying to  _ help _ . He just wished someone would listen to him for once. When all he had done was antagonize them for the past month though, who could blame them for not? 

Exhausted, he fell back on his bed and was unconscious in seconds.

 

* * *

 

In the morning, Kokichi was pleasantly surprised to not be awoken by the sudden urge to vomit. Still resentful towards his classmates, he figured he may as well clean his room as a way of avoiding them. 

He scooped the cameras from the past trial off of the floor and stowed them safely into his desk. Try as he might to deny it, he felt guilty about failing Amami and Akamatsu,about not getting them out before this whole mess happened, and couldn’t in good conscience let all evidence of their deaths disappear. 

After lingering in front of the closed drawer, he turned to the whiteboard, the eyes of his fellow participants staring down at him innocently. He straightened their portraits and wiped away smudges left from his careless edits. He stopped when he came to Harukawa’s picture. He scowled at it; she may have fooled everyone else but Kokichi knew better. Especially after the previous night.

While everyone else ran about the school like headless chickens, looking for anything that could help in the investigation of Hoshi’s death, he made sure to keep an eye on her. 

He’d had enough after the trial. He couldn’t let her keep on like that, being secretive, deceptive, almost more so than himself. And so he exposed her for what she was.

Kokichi was by no means an idiot, he’d expected Harukawa to lash out. Someone like her, he knew she could kill him with ease. What he hadn’t expected was to not be able to duck out of the way in time.

Even with her hand around his neck, thumb pushing against his windpipe, choking the air out of him, he refused to let his facade drop. Not for a second.

When Momota finally made her let go, he thought he was about to fall unconscious. He fell to the ground hard, dust flying up around his legs. He would have gotten through the whole thing with his mask in tact had a sharp pain from his abdomen not caught him off guard, the facade falling for a second to gasp in pain.  

He looked up, glad to see that everyone’s attention was on Harukawa and not him. Why would they care about him? Who would spare him a glance when they could focus on her?

Saihara, apparently.

Kokichi fled to his room in all of the commotion. The only eyes that followed him were the detective’s. His gaze burned holes into Kokichi’s back and he didn’t feel the security of isolation until he was back inside the dormitory.

Just before nighttime rolled around, he snuck out, undetected by everyone still mourning the fresh losses. He found his way to the pool, the black inner tube still floating innocuously on the still water. Using a pole he’d fetched from the the storage cupboard, he fished it out, shaking it off before sticking it under his arm. He carried it back to his room, to join his collection of mementos.

He’d failed again.

He had to end this hellish game. And soon


	4. Fifteen: Apple

Maybe he was just being dense, but Kokichi just couldn’t understand why Saihara would  _ not _ leave him alone.

He couldn’t be that interesting, could he? There was nothing about him that warranted this kind of attention: searching him out, acting like he cared about what he was doing, asking for his opinions in conversations so he wouldn’t feel left out. 

Kokichi didn’t deserve this, did he?

That didn’t stop him from liking it.

It was fun.

At risk of sounding pathetic, he almost managed to convince himself that Saihara’s company made him… sane. Kept his mind free of the fluff and fog, the rampant emotions he couldn’t seem to ward off on his own. As much as the boy distracted him from the mission at hand, Kokichi couldn’t deny that he was helping more than hindering him.

He refused to let himself grow soft though.

In an attempt to make himself believe he wasn’t such a needy, pitiful snotrag, he endlessly messed with the detective. Mind games, threats of death, challenges. Each of which the other, although reluctant, completed with little complaint. 

Watching the other hang on his words not only fed his ego, but the little voice at the back of his mind that kept him returning for more.

He couldn’t fool himself forever though. 

When he eventually sliced his finger open, Kokichi couldn’t ignore the way his stomach flipped at Saihara’s fussing. He couldn’t ignore the way the others touch made him warm to his core. He couldn’t ignore the sinking, empty feeling when he was finally devoid of those tender, caring eyes.

At that point he knew that no matter what happened: if he got out alive, if he died, if he was forced to kill someone. No matter what, he’d never be able to get those eyes out of his mind.


	5. Sixteen: Avocado

The next trial felt as if it was over before it had started. 

He was in general ambivalent to the whole thing, but that didn’t mean the familiar slimy tendrils of guilt didn’t find their way into his chest again, squeezing tighter and tighter until only the bright white pain of despair pervaded his every crevice.

He couldn’t allow the crime scene to disappear like the others. 

He owed that much to the victims.

As he made to leave the solace of his room and gather what he could under the cover of night, he found none other than Saihara on the other side of his door. He had his fist raised, as if to knock on the door that, until a second ago, had been right before him. 

Their eyes met.

Kokichi slammed the door.

He sank back against the door, mind simultaneously full and empty. He registered the knocking  above his head but ignored it. He chewed on his thumbnail.

That was close.

He ran his hands through his hair, his nails scraping against his scalp jogging his thoughts back into a cohesive order.

If he wasn’t careful, he’d end up letting Saihara crack his shell, leaving his vulnerabilities to ooze across the floor. 

When he was sure the coast was clear, Kokichi snuck out to the art room. He was relieved to find the crime scene still intact, the only thing missing, much to his relief, being Yonaga’s body. 

When he returned to the crime scene after getting the first wax figure safely back to his room, Amami’s, the rest were gone and the art room looked as barren as it had when they first discovered it.

Oh well.


	6. Seventeen: Turnip

Kokichi didn’t know what to think about this new Yumeno. She was trying too hard, she was trying to keep peace and was almost turning into some backwards Akamatsu, keeping everyone “together”. But at the same time, at least she was  _ trying _ . She was the only other person actually doing anything, like himself. The others all were just acting under the guise of trying to keep them all together. Kokichi could tell though, he could see that they were all on the verge of giving up, and for not conscribing to that, he couldn’t fault Yumeno. 

It didn’t stop him from wishing she’d be less thoughtless about the shit that spewed from her mouth. 

“I think all that sugar you’re eating’s finally starting to get to you,” she said over dinner, pointing at Kokichi with a fork.

“It’s not like you can talk,” he said, looking down at her plate, overflowing with rice and saturated in some kind of brown, meaty sauce. “And I’m just so hungry! I can’t help myself!”

Iruma was probably going to comment about stuffing himself with something else when Saihara spoke up.

“Yumeno isn’t entirely wrong though. It clearly isn’t doing anything for your health.”

Kokichi stared at him, not knowing how to read that. Then, figuring that sticking to the familiar was his safest bet, he burst into tears. “Are y-you calling me…  _ f-fat!?”  _ he wailed, bringing his hands up to cover his eyes, wiping away fat crocodile tears. “Saihara-chan is so  _ mean _ ! Can’t you tell I’m  _ pregnant _ !?”

The rest of the room was silent for a moment. 

“Do you think we’re idiots?” Momota asked, voice loud, brash and unapologetically rude. “Men can’t get pregnant.”

Quiet laughter replaced the silence and rectified the light-hearted air from before. 

Kokichi kept his head down for the rest of the meal though and left as soon as he could, Momota’s words rattling around his head.

 

* * *

 

Kokichi snuck into Shirogane’s lab, carrying an armful of his uniforms.

They were too small.

He grabbed some white fabric, a needle and some thread. He worked late into the night. 

By morning his hands were dotted with pin pricks and the uniforms had little blotches of red in thankfully unnoticeable places.

He snuck back to his room and slept in late.


	7. Eighteen: Bell pepper

“Why did you do it?”

Kokichi couldn’t read Saihara. Now was no different, but he was certain he was angry. He’d be insane to be anything but. 

The detective had caught up to him after the execution, though Kokichi hadn’t stopped walking until Saihara grabbed his arm and stopped him by force.

“What?”

He refused to look at Saihara’s face, staring down at the grass on the side of the path. 

“You could have just said something. We would have helped!” His voice was shaking. Kokichi was certain he was struggling to contain his outrage and hurt. “You don’t have to handle everything alone.”

“Sure I don’t.”

“You don’t! No one had to die, why couldn’t you just let us help you? We’re your friends.”

Kokichi’s shoulders slumped, defeated. He glanced up at Saihara but ripped his eyes away as soon as he had, his desperate expression as painful to look at as the sun. 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”


	8. Nineteen: Heirloom tomato

Kokichi contorted his face into a malicious smile, eyes narrowing, teeth baring, Momota dangled from the Exisal behind him, the others gaped at him. He couldn’t bring himself to focus on any one of them, terrified by what he might find on their faces. 

Anger? Fright? Hatred?

If he didn’t look, his resolve couldn’t crumble. 

This was all fine. He was fine. They’d never liked him anyway, it wasn’t like he’d lost anything. 

But then Harukawa jumped him.

He should have been able to dodge it, but like before he couldn’t get his body to obey soon enough. His skull slammed into the concrete with a painful crack, his ears ringing and vision blurring, coughs trying to surface under the pressure of her thumbs on his throat. He couldn’t have pushed her off even under normal circumstances. 

He heard screams and yelling, all mushing together into cotton fuzz plugged deep into his ears. Nothing aside from the pain and his need to breathe registered in his mind though.

The world came crashing into clarity around him when breath returned to him though. He could hear words that didn’t stick, feel the cool concrete beneath his back. The pain in his head continued to thump like a concert hall, keeping his vision from returning, black spots clouding what got through. 

His relief was short lived as a new pain blossomed from his gut, rippling across his whole torso. He crumpled under it, falling to his side until his cheek touched the stone beneath him, involuntary tears pooling around his skin.

The pain started to dull ever so slightly, but no voices met his ears. Nothing was fuzzy or distorted, it was simply silent. He would have thought he’d gone deaf were it not for the ringing that continued to rattle through his brain. 

A quiet chorus of ‘blood’ and ‘what?’ then began to build up, and noticing the slickness between his legs, Kokichi understood what was going on. 

So his secret was out. 

He clamped his eyes shut and tried to ignore the now cacophonous voices of panic and confusion.

Then, before he’d even noticed, he’d passed out.  

 

Part 1: end.


	9. Twenty: Banana

The paperwork that sat in front of him, although filled with rows and rows of information, held almost no answers.

Who he was, what he did, where he came from, why he was there? It was all lost to him.

Shuichi picked up the contract again, scanning through the words on the page. Words and words and words that meant everything and nothing. He didn’t have much of a thing for contracts, but even he could tell just how disgusting this one was. 

His gaze lingered on the squiggle at the bottom of the page. It was undecipherable as a name yet somewhere in the crevices of his mind, crevices he would have prefered to ignore but so deep and void-like that it proved impossible to do so, he knew that he’d written it. His hand could almost remember the motions, each gesture and stroke of the pen. If he’d had one to hand he would have tried a recreation, just to try and show that it wasn’t his.

He let the paper flutter down on top of the others and lay back against the pillow. He strained his ears for the rhythmic beeping of a heart monitor somewhere down the hall from his bay, for something steady to focus on, to distract himself with. Banishing his thoughts somewhere far away. Somewhere he could pretend they no longer existed. 

“Saihara-kun?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry, but would you be willing to help me?”

Shuichi swung his legs over the side of the bed and rose to his feet, leaning forward to pull the curtain back a little bit.

The light behind the curtain was harsh, the sun was on its way to the horizon and shone straight through the window into Shuichi’s eyes. He blinked and tried to focus on the bed two down from his own where Kiibo was sat, looking apologetically at him.

“I dropped something.”

Following where Kiibo’s finger was pointing, Shuichi saw a piece of paper sat on the floor on the far end of the room. Without bothering to put his slippers on, he passed under the curtain and went to pick it up, doing his best to ignore the familiar font and watermark adorning the sheet.

“Thank you very much.” Kiibo grinned and accepted the paper.

Shuichi just nodded and turned to leave. He bumped into the wheelchair at the bottom of the bed though and it crashed into the bedpost with a screech of metal on metal. “Sorry,” he mumbled, putting it back before moving to return to his bed.

“Wait.”

He stopped and looked around again.

A frown was tugging at Kiibo’s lips and he was worrying the corner of the piece of paper. “I know you don’t want to talk about it but… do you believe it? What the woman said about-”

“Yes, I do.” Shuichi tugged at the hem of the old bedshirt the hospital had given him. “I don’t want to but… I believe her.”

Kiibo nodded and looked down at his own hands, admiring the colour of the blood pumping under his skin, the grooves and notches in his palms, the small hairs sprouting from his arms. “I did too.”

Shuichi didn’t try to hurry off this time. Instead he lingered, hand resting on the frame of the empty bed between them.

He shook his head and retreated back behind his curtain, guilty about shutting Kiibo out, but not enough to stop him from doing so. 

The curtain rattled on the hanger, the plastic swaying back and forth as it settled, the sunlight from behind silhouetted against the white expanse. Shuichi stood and stared at it for a time, not wanting to sit back down, but not knowing what else he would do with himself.

When he eventually turned back to his bed, he saw the small scrap of paper that stood out among the other documents. The corner of the fluorescent pink post-it sticking out from under a form of some sort.

Shuichi picked it up and stared at Maki’s handwriting, the three numbers, small and scratchy. Before he really knew what he was doing, he’d pulled on the thin dressing gown the hospital had provided and shoved his feet into the slippers under his bed. He ducked under the curtain and moved to the door.

“I’m going for a walk,” he announced, so Kiibo would know he wasn’t there, only realising the unintentional cruelty of his words once they’d left his mouth.

“I hope you have fun.” At least Kiibo sounded unoffended.

 

The hospital was quiet.

The air was permeated by the mumbling of doctors, nurses and other staff as well as the beeping from the various machines around the building, but for the most part there wasn’t a lot of noise. Shuichi didn’t see many people and no one disturbed him on his way through the hallways.

He passed door after door. Each with people behind it. Each of them entirely meaningless to Shuichi until he faced the steel of the elevator. 

Stepping off of it, he knew he was in the right place. The walls were suddenly a pale pink and there was the occasional picture painted onto them. It was slightly demeaning, but a sure sign that he was where he wanted to be. 

These doors weren’t quite so meaningless. While most of them had nothing of interest behind them, his eyes flicked between their numbers, following them like a map. 

303...304...305…

A nurse ran past him, dashing into one of the rooms he’d just passed. He didn’t stop to watch her.

309… 310…

311.

His hand instantly latched onto the handle, the metal cold against his skin, but he didn’t open the door. He stared at the numbers painted on the plastic, debating whether this was a good idea after all. He didn’t know whether his presence would be appreciated or if he’d just serve as a nuisance. He wasn’t even sure if he wanted to do this anymore, or why he’d wanted to in the first place. 

He looked at the pink paper in his other hand then, 311 scribbled across it in Maki’s unexpectedly messy handwriting. 

She’d gone to the trouble of getting the room number for him.

He turned the handle and poked his head in. 

Ouma was the first thing he saw; his thin, frail frame wrapped up in blankets, staring disinteredly out of the window, seemingly unaware of Shuichi’s presence.

He could still back out at this point, but he didn’t really want to now.

Opening the door a little further, Shuichi cleared his throat. Ouma’s head snapped to look at him, an unguarded look of shock splayed across his face for a split-second before a obnoxious smile was plastered over it. 

“My my my, Saihara-chan! Have you never heard of knocking?”

Shuichi’s face blossomed bright red. In all his worrying about this, he’d forgotten that manners were a thing. “Oh, um, I’m sorry. I just…”

Ouma’s snickering cut him off. “It’s okay, I don’t particularly care.” His grin slackened, although was no less cheerful, and he leant back against his pillows, crossing his arms over his chest, resting them on the sizable bump that was hidden by the thin bed sheets. 

He hadn’t meant to stare, but Ouma quickly noticed where Shuichi’s attention had been drawn and the pleasant look dropped entirely. “If you’re here to pity me, you can just leave.”

Shuichi stepped forward and shut the door behind him. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For not helping or even noticing…” Thinking back on that whole experience, Shuichi couldn’t help but think it obvious. He was a fool for being so oblivious. 

“Shut up.”

Ouma had resumed his disinterested window watching. He didn’t look like he was going to say anything further on the matter, so Shuichi shut his mouth, letting the subject drop.

Maybe he’d try some other time.

Instead, he took the seat to Ouma’s right, deliberating whether or not to bring up everything he’d found out. He’d been wondering if Ouma knew about the whole situation, but he couldn’t help but feel like he’d already been filled in. If he’d been left ignorant, Shuichi was sure the first thing from his lips would have been questions.

So instead, he said the only thing that really came to mind.

“Would you like to go for a walk?”

It was getting late, but the sun was still in the sky, and from what he could tell it was warm. He certainly hadn’t been out of the hospital yet so he doubted Ouma had either. 

When Ouma turned to him with another grin on his face, Shuichi already knew what the answer was going to be. 

“Didn’t they tell you!? My feet had to be amputated!”

Shuichi glanced down to the foot of the bed where the sheets were being ruffled by two amused lumps moving back and forth. That was  _ exactly  _ what he was expecting, but it was still a no. 

What he hadn’t expected at all was the melancholy chuckle.

“I can’t walk, well, it’s not easy. I’ve tried.” His grin turned sour. “The doctors say I shouldn’t leave bed either way though, if I want to keep it.”

Shuichi didn’t know what to say as Ouma stared down at himself with pain and disgust. He staved off saying anything, not wanting to offend or upset the other.

“I don’t think they knew about this anymore than I did or they would have put it into my backstory. I don’t remember sleeping with anyone but I guess this is the proof. It still doesn’t quite feel real; at any point it could cease to be if…” Ouma shook his head and sunk back into the shallow bed, head tilting back. 

It was a very foreign sensation, having Ouma be so open with him. Despite his better judgement, he couldn’t help but believe that this was all true, that he was finally seeing a bit of the real Ouma Kokichi, the one that wasn’t hiding behind the facade of supreme leader and liar extraordinaire. 

It made his chest a little tight. 

“I don’t…” Shuichi started, feeling like he had to say something at this point. “I don’t know what you’re planning to do from here but… I’ll help you however I can, okay? Just say the word.”

Ouma cracked an eye open to look at Shuichi. “And why would you do that?”

“Because that’s what friends are for.”

With a sigh, Ouma closed his eye again. “Friends, huh?”

After another moment of silence, he rolled over, turning his back to Shuichi.

Shuichi knew when he wasn’t welcome anymore.

“Thank you.” Shuichi almost missed the small voice, but it stopped him as he had his hand on the door. He looked over at Ouma’s back again. “Thanks for coming.”

“Any time.”


	10. Twenty-one: Carrot

Since waking up in the hospital, Shuichi had often found himself staring at things. His contract was a favourite, as were the curtains around his bed; sometimes it was just the walls in the hallways as he stood around feeling lost. He looked at his feet a lot too, wondering why he even needed them anymore. Once he’d caught himself staring across the bay at Kiibo for no particular reason; he thanked his lucky stars that he hadn’t been caught on that occasion. 

But while most of his staring was caused by an absence of feeling, as he stared at the black computer monitor in front of him, he found himself unable to do anything more than that for an overabundance of feeling. 

The video had ended a good ten minutes ago and the monitor had flicked off from being idle, but Shuichi could still see the playback repeating endlessly in his own stunned reflection.

That morning had been uneventful until the representative from Team Danganronpa had strode into his and Kiibo’s bay reciting some disclaimer, which he’d ignored, and then handed them each a DVD with what she’d claimed were their audition tapes on them. The purpose of returning them was something about proving their consent, but Shuichi had been more interested in what information the video could provide about who he used to be.

Unlike the other three, Shuichi had decided very early on that he was happy to leave behind all semblance of the person he’d been before Danganronpa. Whoever it was, it was no longer him. That decision, however, hadn’t meant that he wasn’t interested in  _ knowing  _ that person. The idea that someone could have the kind of psyche that compelled them to audition for public suicide, and then follow through with it, was morbidly fascinating to Shuichi.

The video had answered very little in that vein of questioning. His own name had been cut from the audio and everything he’d said was about his plans for the killing game and what he wanted to be as an “Ultimate”. 

What it had done, though, was forcibly remove the air from his lungs. 

Because in the footage, stood right next to him, was, undeniably, Ouma Kokichi. 

He’d had to rewatch it a number of times to actually register what the both of them were saying. Every time he saw the two of them next to each other, every time he saw his own arm wrap affectionately around Ouma’s shoulders, the implications of it all clouded his senses. How long ago had that been filmed? It had to be a few months old by that point, surely, and the face he was seeing was the one he saw when he looked into a mirror. 

He may not have been the Ultimate Detective, but he didn’t need to be to connect these dots. 

He didn’t leave that spot until one of the junior doctors tapped him on the shoulder and asked if he was still using the library computer, at which point he hurried off back to his own bed, hoping that maybe he could escape the hailstorm of guilt by falling into, hopefully dreamless, sleep. 

 

* * *

 

 

The group therapy sessions that they were forced to attend were generally very awkward. The four of them weren’t together very often outside of the sessions, but when they were they tended to talk freely about their problems, usually with colourful language. When they were made to talk with a therapist in the room though, it was much harder to be so loose lipped.

They’d sit in a small circle and the kindly therapist would do his best to coax their thoughts from them. Now and then he succeeded, but most of the time they felt so uncomfortable talking about such a traumatic experience to someone who could never in his wildest dreams even begin to understand what they were feeling, that they just let the hour pass with very little headway being made. 

For some unspoken reason though, the session they had they day after being given the audition tapes was a lot less restrained. The four of them were so full of questions with unreachable answers and feelings that would likely never be resolved and simply have to be gotten over or forever repressed, that once one of them started speaking, the rest of them just fell into line and couldn’t be shut up.

Yumeno had been the first to speak out. Well, not so much speak as break into ugly, blubbering sobs. Her words had been incomprehensible for the most part but the tsunami of sorrow and great loss touched the other three in a way that only a person who has been severed from their own perception of reality can truly understand.

Kiibo had been next. He and Yumeno had shouted empathies at each other, using each other’s issues as a springboard to launch into their own problems at which the other would scream ‘YES!’ or ‘EXACTLY!’ in agreement. 

At some point Shuichi had found place in amongst all the yelling to express his own feelings of emptiness and curiosity. This, in turn, had led all four of them into a long tirade about all kinds of paranoia, loss and alienation.

The hour passed in a mess of voices and tears, and by the end of it the therapist looked rather rattled, but also pleased with the progress and hopeful that further sessions would prove equally enlightening. 

On their way out though, Maki pulled them aside in the hallway.

“I’ve been looking around, and I’ve found a dirt cheap apartment. I checked it out the other day and while it’s… well shitty, it’s two bedrooms and really close to the hospital.”

Shuichi hadn’t really thought about it much, what with how busy he’d been staring at things, but the date they were due to be “discharged” from the hospital was at the end of that week. It was only now hitting him that he’d done very little to prepare for it. From the looks on Kiibo and Yumeno’s faces, he guessed that they hadn’t paid it much thought either. 

“I wasn’t sure what you guys were planning, and I know it’s going to be really cramped but…”

“That sounds great, Maki.” Shuichi nodded at her, and Kiibo and Yumeno quickly joined in.

As he was wheeling Kiibo back to their room, Shuichi, for the first time in weeks, actually felt secure about something. For the first time in weeks, he genuinely smiled. 

 

* * *

 

 

For reasons beyond Shuichi’s grasp, he’d found himself unable to visit obstetrics all week.

He hadn’t felt unwelcome the last time he’d visited; looking back on it, Shuichi suspected that Ouma had been quite pleased to receive familiar company. But every time he considered wandering over during a bout of his hallway staring, he’d clammed up and hurried back to his room, hoping that Kiibo could provide a welcome distraction. 

After he’d seen his audition tape he had a much clearer excuse for not visiting, but that excuse made it worse. This wasn’t something he could sit on and let stew. It was more Ouma’s business than it was his own, and not talking to him about it was… well it just wasn’t right. Still, he managed to put it off all week. When Thursday had rolled around, though, and a nurse had come by to help pack up what little stuff him and Kiibo had before they’d be leaving the next day, Shuichi realised that if he didn’t do it then, he wouldn’t do it ever. 

And so he walked through the pink hallways once again, counting the door numbers despite already knowing where he was going. He plodded along slowly, getting odd looks from nurses and doctors weaving around him. Each step was laborious in the effort it took to not about-face and march straight back to his bedside, forcing himself to pull this through to its conclusion. 

After what felt like a millennia, he was staring at the familiar numbers painted onto the plastic: 311. Just beyond this door was his goal in this whole endeavour, the one thing that had been weighing so heavily on his conscience all week. If he didn’t do this for Ouma, he should at least do it out of selfishness. 

He couldn’t bring himself to open the door though. He was so close, but his hand wouldn’t move from his side. He couldn’t get it to budge, get it wrap around the metal handle and open the door. It should have been so easy, the door would have likely collapsed under his foot had he tried it, and yet it felt like an immovable barrier, an obstacle too great to overcome.

He couldn’t do it.

He couldn’t subject himself to this. He couldn’t bear the cold gaze he’d surely be met by if he went inside. He couldn’t face the truth that all of the other’s suffering was his own fault.

He turned to walk away.

The door opened.

On the other side of it was Ouma, clinging to the doorframe and looking thoroughly confused by the sight of Shuichi standing in front of him. 

Ouma was so utterly baffled that he didn’t bother to put up any kind of face as he said, “What are you doing here?”

Shuichi, too, was quite confused. Having just decided on giving up, coming face to face with Ouma had been wiped from his todo list and, subsequently seeing him now made his brain come to a halt.

“I was coming to visit.”

“Then why are you facing away from the door?”

Shuichi looked down at himself, his whole body facing back the way he’d come. 

“I… I don’t know.” He turned back around, figuring that he wasn’t getting out of it now. “Why are you out of bed?”

Ouma rolled his eyes, a grin rising to his face. “The doctor changed her mind. I’m allowed to go wherever I want now! I was planning to go for a walk around town, a mile or so in the fresh air seemed like a great way to clear my head.”

The medical gown that was hanging off of his shoulders spoke otherwise. 

“You shouldn’t be on your feet,” Shuichi said, turning Ouma around and forcing him back into the room. Ouma didn’t seem happy about it, be he didn’t protest. “I thought you said you were bedridden.”

“Strict bedrest, actually. And  _ really _ , Saihara-chan, a lot can change in a week.”

Shuichi ignored him as he forced the boy back into bed, unsure of how best to help him get comfortable. It didn’t seem to matter though, because Ouma just shrugged back under the covers on his own, a melodramatic pout on his lips.

“You’re worse than the nurses,” he muttered, crossing his arms over his chest. “Sitting in here all the time is like watching paint dry.”

“You say that like watching paint dry is boring.” Having spent so much time doing exactly that, Shuichi felt justified in taking offence.

“It is.” Ouma snorted, a bemused smile wrinkling his face. “Who the hell likes watching paint dry?” Then a more feline grin pulled at his lips. “Unless you’re saying you’ve been doing that yourself?”

Shuichi’s ears began glowing pink and Ouma burst into laughter, continuing to mock him for his latest hobby.

While he wasn’t all that happy about being teased, it did make him realise something rather odd. This all felt incredibly familiar, and familiar had been the very last thing he’d expected from this exchange. Ouma wasn’t being cold, or disdainful, or any different at all from usual. The idea that Ouma would have been unable to connect the dots was out of the question, so that left Shuichi with only one, surprising, conclusion.

“The rest of us got audition tapes from Team Danganronpa this week. Did you…?”

“Chucked it.”

Shuichi blinked. “What?”

“I threw it away without watching it.” Something in the bitter inflection of his voice told Shuichi that that was the truth. “I have no interest in knowing how fucked the past me was, in both senses, so I figured it was useless. It’s not like it would have told me how this,” he gestured down at himself, “happened, anyway.” He shrugged. “What about you?”

“Huh?”

“Your video? I assume you’ve watched it.”

Shuichi nodded.

“Anything interesting?”

If you had asked Shuichi beforehand how he’d predict himself reacting to this situation, he would have been one hundred percent sure that he’d have paused for a second before inevitably doing the right thing and coming clean. 

Therefore, it surprised even him when, without even thinking about it, he’d said:

“Not really.”

Ouma grunted. “Yeah, I’d expected about as much.” He stretched and sunk what little way he could into the thin hospital pillows. “Mind opening the window?”

“Sure.”

The world Shuichi saw outside of that window was completely unaffected by what had just happened. People still went on about their days, cars honked at each other and the birds flew from tree to tree. It almost felt unfair that the world could look so normal while Shuichi was falling apart at the realisation of just how despicable a human being he really was.


	11. Twenty-two: Spaghetti squash

“I do hope it tastes alright.”

“I doubt it’s any worse than the hospital food.”

Kiibo chuckled as he handed off a ladle to Shuichi. “Yes, I guess the standards are low.”

The other three had protested at Kiibo’s offer to cook at first. It seemed more than unfair to make the only one of them who was wheelchair bound do a task any one of them could have done adequately, but he’d put up an unbeatable offense and wrangled his way into the kitchen.

Shuichi began filling four cheap bowls with soup from a large pot on the stove. “At the very least, it smells great.” Taking inhaling deeply over the pot, Shuichi sighed as the mouthwatering aroma filled his nostrils. Large chunks of chopped vegetables fell into the bowls swimming with creamy broth and Shuichi couldn’t wait to actually taste it.

“You think so?” Kiibo asked, rushing over to look at the bowls himself.

“Woah!” Yumeno’s voice then rang into the kitchen from the front door. “That smells great guys!” She rushed in without removing her shoes to get a look at Kiibo’s hard work.

A large grin rose to Kiibo’s face as he held up one of the bowls to show her. “It does, doesn’t it!”

The sound of the front door closing was soon followed by Maki’s appearance behind Yumeno in the kitchen door. “You need any help?”

The three of them quickly laid the table as Shuichi gathered the dirty cooking utensils and dropped them in the sink. They didn’t have much in the way of kitchenware, or any wares for that matter, but, using what little Kiibo received in the way of benefits for his paralysis, they’d been able to buy what little they’d needed and even meet the first month’s rent. They weren’t exactly comfortable, but it was more than enough for the time being.

Yumeno, Kiibo and Maki were already sat to the table by the time Shuichi left the kitchen and were waiting impatiently for him to join them.

A collective groan of delight filled the room as they all began to eat, not having eaten so well since Toujou had still been alive (or ever, for Kiibo). For a good minute, the only sounds were that of them eating, making the absolute most out of the little things.

“Since when can you cook, Kiibo-kun?” Yumeno asked, running her finger through the last dregs of the broth to collect all the drips she could.

He shook his head. “I do not know. I remember nothing of a life where I’ve ever eaten anything and yet this entire experience came to me naturally. My guess is that I used to cook for myself before the show. At the very least, we can now reap the benefits.”

“Delicious benefits,” Shuichi added as he, similarly to Yumeno, tried to salvage the last of his meal. “You guys should have seen him,” he continued. “You’d think it would be harder to do when you can’t even see inside the pot, but Kiibo-kun made it look like the easiest thing in the world.”

“H-how did your search go?” Kiibo abruptly changed the subject, the tips of his ears beginning to flush pink.

Maki shrugged. “We found a few listings and we got some CV’s printed.” She let her spoon clatter against the side of her bowl and leant back in her chair. “It’s definitely going to take a while. but with all three of us looking, _one_ of us has to get hired somewhere eventually.”

Shuichi didn’t miss the way that the blush on Kiibo’s face extended to his cheeks and nose as the boy ducked his head.

“Oh, oh! I bought something while we were out!” Yumeno mentioned, still doing her best to keep the mood up. She jumped out of her chair and grabbed a small paper bag sat by the front door. Setting it down, she pulled out a large yellowed book and let it fall on the table with a loud thump.

Kiibo and Shuichi leant over to get a look at the cover. It read ‘Balthazar Batterbee’s Expert Guide to Magic’ in a faded gold font. An American magician’s face was plastered on the front but the cover had been scratched to give him a less than attractive quality. Still, they understood what Yumeno was getting at.

“I found it in a second hand book store. It was really cheap and I thought it could be useful!” She turned it around to face herself and began to flip through the pages. “I may not be a famous magician, but if I’m any good I could take up busking while waiting for a job! If I got good enough, I could maybe even do small gigs!”

“I didn’t know you could read English?” Shuichi looked over the pages himself, only being able to understand bits and pieces. A lot of the language looked to be jargon and complexly written.

She nodded though. “Yeah, apparently. Old me must have been fluent.”

“We shouldn’t need to do this,” Maki suddenly growled, turning all attention onto her. “I mean, what sort of bullshit is it that we aren’t compensated for everything they did to us? They almost killed three of us, and that’s only out of the survivors.”

Shuichi grimaced, somehow knowing that they would reach this point, but still being unpleasantly surprised now that they had. “There’s nothing we can do about it now, Maki-”

“Yeah, but the least they could do is help us assimilate and settle down. Those contracts seemed suspicious at best. If we could have a lawyer or something look at them I bet anything that we could find _something_ wrong.”

“Well if we were going to do that, we might as well go ahead and sue the whole company,” Yumeno said with a wry smile. “I mean, if we broke those contracts we could do… anything, yknow?”

The four of them looked between each other, letting the idea settle in a little; the dream of bringing any kind of justice upon Team Danganronpa a romantic but implausible one.

The moment was broken when Maki started to laugh, nothing raucous, but it still put a small smile back on her face. “Who are we kidding, that’s the worst idea I’ve had yet.” She shook her head at the naivete of her thoughts.

Kiibo and Yumeno smiled too, evaporating any tension that had built up. Shuichi refused to let the idea go though. He’d been blaming that contract for all of this, he’d spent hours staring at nothing thinking about the damned contract. The idea that there was something wrong with it, that he could break it, was too sweet not to linger on.

Soon enough though, he was forced to let it go and help clean up the mess from dinner, he and Yumeno washing and drying the dirty dishes and storing the leftovers for another time.

When he was sprawled on the old mattress they’d lain for him on the floor beside Kiibo’s bed though, trying to abandon consciousness and be free of the world for a few precious hours, he couldn’t get ideas of retribution out of his head. The thoughts swirled around his skull for hours as Kiibo snored sofly above him, and eventually he fell asleep with the image of his contract branded on the backs of his eyelids.  

 

* * *

 

Shuichi couldn’t say he often attained feelings of familiarity. Not having many memories to call upon, that wasn’t surprising. The only things that ever truly felt familiar were things that reminded him of the Killing Game, and that kind of familiarity wasn’t pleasant.

The dull aching of his limbs and the sensation of fire ripping through his muscles as his feet beat along the cold concrete was, however, a feeling that met somewhere in the heavenly limbo between familiar and the Killing Game. Exercise had been one of the only things that helped him keep his head on straight then, and it was doing the same thing now.

The sun wasn’t quite up yet, but the birds had already risen and were singing a piercing song of good morning to the sleepy world around them, reminding them that it was time to leave the peace of their dreams and return to the world of mundanities they resided in. The air wasn’t yet humid so, as he came to a gradual stop, a cool breeze ran over his face and momentarily made him forget that it was going to get much hotter later.

In all, it was probably the best he’d felt since waking up in that hospital two weeks prior.

Shuichi slumped onto a bench a few feet from where he’d stopped and let the feeling return to his legs. The painfully numb ache in his legs wasn’t unwelcome, but the overwhelming relief as they rested was a glorious thing he hadn’t experienced in far too long.

A plastic bottle was shoved in his face and he accepted it without a word.

As soon as he could feel the lukewarm liquid trickling down his oesophagus, he raised his head and tipped the bottle in the direction it had come from. “Thanks,” he said, voice raspy.

“No… no problem,” Maki replied, hands bracing her upper legs as she got her breath back too.

It was a very foreign experience to Shuichi, seeing Maki physically tired. Shuichi didn’t know what the people at Team Danganronpa had done to her, but they’d somehow managed to give her an unending supply of strength and stamina that she’d apparently never had. Where she could have once performed a hundred push ups in less than a minute, now she struggled to make ten in two. It served as a stark reminder that he wasn’t who he thought he was.

However much it unsettled Shuichi though, it had a much more harrowing affect on Maki. She’d been acting brave, he knew, but he also knew that she was as terrified and displaced by this whole thing as the rest of them. Her body not being able to do what she’d come to expect of it seemed to throw her whole world off kilter.

It had been her idea for them to go running in the mornings. Shuichi thought at first it may have been an attempt to make up for Kaito’s absence, but he could now see that, while that was probably part of the reason, she was doing it to become stronger, and Shuichi was the only one she could allow to see herself in this state. He was touched and relieved to know that she rested as heavily on him as he did on her.

And she was resting on him quite literally right then.

“Give.” She held out her hand and let all her weight fall onto the elbow she’d placed on Shuichi’s shoulder.

He took a final quick sip before passing it back up to her. They’d only been able to afford a single water bottle. Frankly, he’d been rather surprised just how expensive a hunk of plastic could be.

“Do you want to sit a while or get home?” he asked between pants, pushing his sweat soaked fringe out of his face.

“I,” she started, leaning more heavily still on him. “I want to say that we should go straight home…” She then began pushing him until he shifted up the bench and she sat in his place. “But I think I’ll collapse if I keep going.” She shook her head and fell against the back of the bench with a loud squeak of metal. “If the other two ask, we didn’t stop once, okay?”

Shuichi laughed and nodded. “Fine by me.” He didn’t know about Yumeno, but there was very little chance that he’d talk about it to Kiibo.

They sat and caught their breath for a good ten minutes, exchanging clipped conversation about Maki visiting the hospital later and how she found a leaflet for night school in the careers office she’d visited with Yumeno.

They were in the middle of talking about a language class that had particularly taken Maki’s interest when all of a sudden, Shuichi felt something collide with his head and was immediately drenched with something cold.

“Rot in despair, fuckers!”

Neither of them did anything but watch as the car flew by, taking the offenders with it, leaving them behind covered in a sticky, fruity smelling substance, completely and utterly baffled.

“What just happened?” Maki asked in a small voice.

Shuichi blinked again and looked down to his feet where a plastic bottle was rolling slowly down the pavement away from him. He bent over and picked it up, inspecting the orangey-pink liquid inside before reading the label: Peach Iced Tea.

“Someone just threw iced tea at us.”

“Oh… okay.”

Not quite sure what else to do, Shuichi stood up and dropped the bottle in the nearest public bin. The tea had saturated his clothes and droplets fell and splashed to the floor whether he moved or not.

Looking at Maki, he was relieved to see that he was significantly worse off than she was, because she did _not_ need this right now and they both knew it.

Defeated and confused and the tiniest bit scared, Maki rose to her feet too and moved to stand next to Shuichi. “I think it’s about time we go home.”

“Yeah, let’s.”

 

* * *

  

Shuichi had thought that magic training with Yumeno would be a lot more painful than it was. He hadn’t been at all involved in the last trick she performed, and considering just how wrong that whole debacle went, he hadn’t been overly keen to help with this. Thankfully it had turned out to be much less emotionally taxing. At least no one had died yet.

“And when I do this…” Yumeno trailed off as she fiddled with the deck of cards in her hands. “Ta daa!” Having seen the trick in slow motion, when Yumeno snatched the correct card from the middle of the deck at seemingly random, it was a little less incredible. Still, Shuichi clapped.

“That’s another to cross off the list,” he said, reaching for the pen and paper sat on the table. They’d spent a good hour pouring through Yumeno’s book looking for easy to moderate tricks for her to master. They needed at least enough for her to start busking.

Yumeno nodded. “Mark that one with a circle though, I need to get better at it.”

Shuichi nodded and did as instructed. They’d so far marked off two of the tricks as being performance ready, and another six, now seven, as being doable, but needing practice. “Which next?”

Taking the list Shuichi held out to her, Yumeno ran her finger up and down the list. She squinted at it before nodding and pointing one nearer the bottom.

“Are you sure?” Shuichi asked, reading the entry. ‘Coin through glass’. The tricks towards the bottom, while simple enough, were put nearer the end of the list because they require greater sleight of hand. This one in particular was simple but needed a lot of precision.

Yumeno just nodded again. “I’m sure! The others have gone so well, I think it’s about time I stepped it up, yknow?” She smiled up at him before standing to retrieve a glass from the kitchen.

It wasn’t that he didn’t have faith in Yumeno, or thought her too unskilled, it was more that he was worried what a failure to meet expectations would do to her.

“Do you have a penny?”

Shuichi dug around in his pocket and pulled out a small coin.

“Gimme.” She snatched it off of him and placed it in her palm. “Could you find the page?”

Doing as asked, Shuichi pulled the large tome towards him and flipped through to the middle where all the medium difficulty tricks were. “Here.”

Yumeno’s eyes scanned the page, reading over the foreign words with little effort. She tossed the penny in her hand a little, trying to mimic the actions described on the page. After a bit of that she picked up the glass.

The first attempt went less than stellar. She tried to let the penny fall to the end of her fingers, catching it in the crook of her knuckles, but it just fell straight off of her hand and clattered to the floor. To her credit, Yumeno was undeterred. She just picked it up and tried again, and again, and again.

Shuichi had initially been impressed at how optimistic about all of this Yumeno had been. He knew that, had he been in her shoes, he would be more than a little frazzled by this point. But it was clear that as she continued to fail, the coin flying all over the room, that it was starting to get to her. It took a while, but her frown of focus morphed into one of distress. The second Shuichi saw tears threaten to well in her eyes, he snatched the items from her.

“Hey!”

“I think that’s enough.” He cringed under her offended glare. “Maybe we should just focus on the other tricks. Master those ones before we move onto any more?”

She shook her head. “No, I can do this!” she protested, reaching out to take the glass back off of him. “It’s easy!”

“It’s obviously not.”

“Yes it is! I should be able to do this in my sleep.” Just as Shuichi had feared, the tears began to break through the dam. “This is _nothing_ to a seasoned magician. I’ve always had great sleight of hand and I can do this!”

Shuichi put the things down on the chair next to him before taking hold of Yumeno’s wrists.

“No, Yumeno Himiko can do this. _You_ can’t.”

It pained him to see the desperation and hurt in her expression as he said this, but he knew he had to.

“The game… did things to us. It let us do things we couldn’t have normally done before. It let _me_ think in ways I just can’t now. It let Kiibo _walk_. And it let you do complex magic. You just… Look, I know it’s hard, trust me, we’re all in the same boat here, but you just have to let this go.”

Yumeno’s eyes wandered over to where the book was still lying open on the table. “But…” Whatever she was going to say died in her throat though. Her arms slackened and she finally gave up. “Then why am I doing this?”

“I… I don’t know…” He dropped her hands and looked at the list again. He picked it up before turning it over to show her. “But I do know that you can do some of this.” He pointed at the two big ticks near the top of the page. “You may not be ‘The Ultimate Magician’, but you can do magic. Just not all of it.”

He set the list down in front of Yumeno and smiled.

She looked down at it, focusing on the two ticks. “Yeah. I guess I’m not hopeless.”

“Of course you aren’t.” Shuichi laughed. “And I’m sure you’ll be dazzling people with your tricks in no time flat.”

“They aren’t tricks,” she mumbled, struggling to subdue the big grin that was trying to invade her face. “It’s magic.”

“Oh, right, of course.” He moved the cup and penny from the chair onto the table, and then picked up the deck of cards. “Well, let’s practice some more _magic,_ then.”

She nodded and accepted the deck. “Okay.”

Just as Yumeno was shuffling the cards in preparation for the trick, the door to her’s and Maki’s room slammed open.

“Hey, Maki,” Shuichi said, unsure about the manic gleam in her eyes.

“I got an interview.”

Shuichi and Yumeno stared at her for a second, all thoughts of magic completely forgotten, before they leapt from their chairs to congratulate her.

 

* * *

 

While it hadn’t been a cake walk, the week had been growing steadily better as it went on. Kiibo’s food never disappointed, he and Maki hadn’t encountered any more flying bottles and Yumeno had been getting better and more confident in her magic. Maki getting her interview had also been a definite high point. But, better than any of that was when he picked up the call from the hospital.

Kaito had been released from intensive care.

Shuichi and Maki hadn’t spared any time racing out of the door and down the street to the hospital, yelling brief goodbyes to Yumeno and Kiibo on the way out.

Kaito had definitely seen better days. The doctors informed them that he was doing much better than he had been and that they’d been able to remove most of the life support, but he was still a maze of tubes.

He wore a big smile as they walked into his room though, waving at them and doing his best to be loud, like normal, but it was obvious what a toll the effort took on him. He tried to be energetic too, talking and talking, doing his best to convince the both of them that he was perfectly fine. It was almost painful to watch how much he failed.

Regardless, the both of them were over the moon to see him alive and stable.

They sat and talked for a while, catching him up on what he’d missed, and Shuichi even managed to squeeze in some complaining about their contracts, although Kaito just seemed to find his whining funny. Kaito was sluggish though, no matter how much he tried to hide it, a side effect of the painkillers they’d pumped him up with and Shuichi worried that he wasn’t going to stay awake for much longer. So, during a lull in conversation, he announced that he needed to use the toilet and excused himself. Kaito nodded without question, but Maki knew what he was doing and shot him a stare that screamed betrayal. He ignored her, expertly suppressing a small smirk, and left.

Having left though, and knowing that Maki would kill him if he went home, Shuichi met the dilemma of having nothing to do. It wasn’t like the hospital was a treasure trove of interesting activities, he’d been bored out of his mind when he’d been a _patient_ , and now, as a visitor, he had even fewer options before him.

He’d just come to the conclusion that he should seek out his old favourite patch of wall, when he was distracted by a mother carrying a crying toddler and it hit him that he should probably go and visit Ouma.

Shuichi would have liked nothing more than to avoid Ouma for as long as was humanly possible, still mortified by his own cruelty. _Ouma_ was supposed to be the liar, not him. And yet here he was.

The bigger problem was that, while Shuichi had every reason in the world not to visit, or so he told himself, from Ouma’s perspective, Shuichi had just left the hospital and never come back. And he couldn’t imagine how bored Ouma had to be, cooped up in that room, bed ridden, with nothing to do and no one to talk to because the only person who ever visited him had decided to stop, seemingly, out of the blue.

Shuichi sighed and began to make his way to the obstetrics ward.

Unlike the previous two times Shuichi had made this journey, this time his mind remained mercifully blank. Winding through the hospital hallways, dodging patients, visitors, doctors and nurses alike, he managed to keep his mind from spiraling back into that pit of guilt he was so used to dwelling in. He didn’t bother to count the door numbers on the way through obstetrics, he didn’t or even hesitate outside the door.

As he came face to face with the door, he wasted no time in rapping his knuckles against the plastic.

Disappointingly, his show of courage was rewarded with no more than silence from the other side. Shuichi tried knocking again, but was met with the same response.

He supposed that Ouma had become used to the doctors knocking as a simple courtesy and no longer bothering to answer before they inevitably let themselves in. Still, Shuichi considered that barging in unannounced (again) would have been a little rude, especially when Ouma had no reason to expect him.

He knocked one last time, but when he was met by yet more silence, he sighed and cracked the door open.

Inside he saw Ouma staring blankly out of the window, a large book open in his lap and a pair of cheap looking headphones resting over his ears. The music from them was so loud that Shuichi could hear it from where he was standing in the door.

“Ouma?” he called, raising his voice.

Ouma jumped and snapped around to look at him, eyes wide with confusion. His shoulders quickly relaxed and his mouth pulled into a small smile.

“I wasn’t expecting a visit from you, Saihara-chan,” he stated as he threw the headphones off of his head and onto the bed, the music going silent when the jack came loose from the old phone it was plugged into. “Though I’m pretty sure I told you knock.”

“I did knock,” Shuichi retorted, stepping in and closing the door behind him, not bothering to hang around before approaching the bed. “You didn’t respond.”

“That’ll be the headphones,” Ouma explained, pointing at them, and giving Shuichi a look that suggested he thought he was rather dim.

Shuichi just shook his head and sat down.

“How’d you get them anyway?” he asked. “Or that,” he added, nodding towards the phone laying in the sheets.

Ouma held it up proudly. “The nurses have taken to doting on me, it’s kinda cool. Their pity is annoying but they keep giving me shit to keep me entertained, so there’s that. I think they feel bad because I never get any visitors.” He narrowed his eyes at Shuichi melodramatically before tossing the phone away from himself. “Speaking of, what brings you here on this fine day?”

“I suppose you won’t believe me if I said I came just to see you, would you?”

“Nope.”

Shuichi chuckled. “Well, Kaito was discharged from intensive care this morning,” he said, leaning back. “Maki and I came to visit but… well, yknow, I thought I should leave them alone for a bit.”

Ouma pretended to gag. “Gross, Saihara-chan. I don’t want to think about _that_.” His face split back into a grin soon enough though. “At least it brought you here, I guess.” He pouted then. “Do you have any idea how much I’ve missed you! A whole week without my beloved Saihara-chan, it’s been awful on my health. The doctors have been worrying about me dying of a broken-heart.”

It was only a joke, so Shuichi forced out what he hoped was a convincing enough smile, but the idea of Ouma being any worse off because of him made the bottom of his stomach fall through. “Surely you’ve found better company than me around here?”

Ouma rolled his eyes. “ _No_ . Everyone’s _nice_ and stuff, but they’re all as dull as dishwater. You can’t find intelligent conversation anywhere in this godforsaken place.”

Shuichi’s smile became truly genuine then, as Ouma’s expression slackened into a mild scowl, a little glimpse behind the mask. “I’d have thought intelligent conversation would be easy to come across when you’re surrounded by doctors.”

“Well then you’d have thought _wrong_.”

Just as Ouma was about to open his mouth to complain about something else though, he seemed to freeze in place, eyes blowing wide again.

“Are you okay?” Shuichi asked, brow furrowing at the look of confusion that had fallen over Ouma’s face.

In response, Ouma snatched up Shuichi’s hands and held them against his stomach.

Shuichi was momentarily stunned by the sudden contact, not remembering the last time they actually touched, and further confused by the way his skin pleasantly burned under Ouma’s fingertips. It didn’t take long for Shuichi to understand though.

Something was moving underneath his hands.

“Is that…?”

Ouma just nodded, a faint smile dancing at the corners of his lips.

“Has it…”

Ouma shook his head before Shuichi could finish the question.

It felt like hours had passed before Ouma carefully pulled Shuichi’s hands off of him with an uncertain laugh. “God Shuichi, if I didn’t know any better I’d say you just got a kick out of touching me.”

Shuichi couldn’t find an answer to that, still in awe of what he’d just been fortunate enough to witness. The chances that he’d get to be present for something like that… It left him speechless.

Unfortunately his speechlessness quickly turned into awkward silence as Ouma’s statement was left hanging in the room.

The tension was broken though when a knock came from the door. Ouma called for them to enter and Maki poked her head around the door.

“Kaito wants to go to sleep, so I said I’d fetch you to say goodbye.”

She spoke straight to Shuichi, ignoring Ouma entirely. Shuichi could feel Ouma tensing up beside him, but didn’t have much choice but to ignore it. He nodded and rose to his feet. “Yeah, I’m sure Kiibo will be getting antsy to start cooking too,” he added with a small chuckle, hoping to drain a little of the tension.

Maki smiled a little and nodded before ducking back into the hall to wait for him.

Shuichi turned to see Ouma still staring at the door. “I did say she was here.”

Ouma blinked out of his daze and shrugged. “Yeah, whatever. Wasn’t expecting her in here though.”

“Yeah… Anyway, I guess that’s my cue to leave.” He put his hand on the door before turning back around. “I’ll come visit again, if that’s okay. And I won’t take a whole week to do it next time.”

Ouma snickered. “I suppose, since you’re asking so nicely.”

Shuichi nodded and smiled. “I’ll see you later then!”

“Bye Saihara-chan!”

 

* * *

 

At dinner that night, Shuichi couldn’t get the day’s events out of his head.

The ghost of little kicks under his palms kept playing on repeat, the feeling of life beneath his hands one that was difficult to forget. The idea that there was a living being in there, an innocent baby that was almost killed in the quest for ratings just wouldn’t leave him alone. It filled him a kind of anger that he wasn’t used to harbouring, a pure need for revenge like nothing he’d ever felt before.

As he put his cutlery down on the plate he sat up straight and got the others’ attention.

“I’ve decided,” he began, slightly unsure of himself, but committed nonetheless, “that I’m gonna try to break those stupid contracts. Or… or do _something_ , at least.”

The other three gawked at him but didn’t say anything, waiting for him to finish.

“I can’t sit here anymore and just… do _nothing_ while our friends are sitting in a hospital, while the bigwigs at Danganronpa sit on their piles of money that they gained at the expense of our friends _lives_ . At the expense of _hundreds_ of lives of innocent teenagers who needed help but instead were helped to get themselves killed.”

Shuichi paused for breath, sinking his face into his hands and pressing the heels of his palms against his eyes.

“Then I’ll help.”

He looked up to see Maki smiling at him.

“Yeah, me too!” Yumeno added, nodding defiantly.

Kiibo nodded too. “Of course. We’ll all do whatever we can.”

Shuichi sighed with relief. He’d half expected them to laugh at him and mock him for wanting to do something so futile, but he really should have known better.

“Thanks, guys.”


End file.
